CurtainUp DC Report:
November 1997
"America, America"

November DC Report TopicsNOTE: November has
shaped
up as an especially busy month for CurtainUp in DC. So much so that
I have split the DC Report into two parts: this early one and a later one
which should be up before Thanksgiving. All of the topics, once posted,
can be reached directly via the links below.

With one exception, this month's plays revolve around
some aspect of that place we call America: North, South, urban, suburban,
working class, political class and so on. (The one exception is Othello
which, as will be seen, should prove universal enough to have great meaning
in modern-day America as well.) A few interesting statistics: four of the
plays are new -- all by women, three of whom are African-American.

Our Impression of an Update:
Working

An unexpected connection seems to be developing this year between Studs
Terkel and theaters named Signature. New York's Signature opened its season
with Arthur Miller's The American Clock, which draws its inspiration
from Terkel's Hard Times. (This fact is disclosed in CurtainUp's
review, a link to which you can find at the end of this report.) Here in
DC, Arlington's Signature Theatre, which has won acclaim for
rethinking musicals, has tackled Stephen Schwartz's problematic Working,
based on Studs Terkel's book of the same name.

The original production of Working, featuring a young Patti Lupone
among others, opened on Broadway in 1978 but closed after only 25 performances.
Signature Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer has worked with Schwartz and
his collaborator, Nina Faso, to update and improve the show. There are
new working people, new songs and a new approach. The most noticeable changes:

Size: The original cast of 14, had been down-sized to 9 actors, each doing many jobs.

Structure: The two acts lasting over two hours ha ve been reduced
to one 90 minute act. The work break (the audience calls it the intermission)
has been eliminated.

Cultural Mix: The workforce reflects s more diversity than before.

Jobs: The newsboy is gone, the meter-reader is now a UPS man, people have
learned to use computers and there are new jobs in telecommunications,
fundraising and international money management.

Sounds: Instead of the clang of the grocery cash register, we hear the
beep of a scanner; telephone bells are replaced by electronic tones.

The intent of Working is to give a musical voice to the lives and
values of the working people examined in Terkel's interviews (as now modernized).
Schaeffer gives the revue some charm and a healthy sense of humor -- something
as important to getting through the workday as it is to enjoying the show.
Individual moments are often touching, several of the performances are
excellent and, at 90 minutes, Working is certainly enjoyable. But,
there remains an essential hollowness. Just as themes start to emerge,
they are discarded in favor of a different tempo or a new concern. We are
left with images but no message which adds up as good entertainment but not particularly
good theater.

Much of the music remains from the original, albeit tweaked for the
90's. Working is (as it always has been) a collaborative effort
musically. In addition to four of his own songs, Schwartz includes the
work of a host of others: There are four by James Taylor, including "Traffic Jam"
which was not in the original show; three by Micki Grant; four (including
a couple of my favorites) by Craig Carnelia; and a particularly nice one
with music by Mary (Once Upon a Mattress) Rogersand lyrics
by Susan(Triumph of Love) Birkenhead. One of Schwartz's
own songs is a spirited new one called "I'm Just Movin'".

Performances continue through December 7, 1997. The theater is located
at 3806 S. Four Mile Run Drive in Arlington, VA. Telephone for tickets
is (703) 218-6500.

Review: The Darker Face of the
Earth

Rita Dove's poetry won her a Pulitzer in her mid-thirties; she went on
to became the youngest (and first African-American) Poet Laureate of the
United States. It should not be surprising, then, that her first venture
into playwriting has produced an enormously powerful and beautiful work.
The themes are intricate, the main characters full-bodied and the language
-- oh, the language -- nothing short of stunning. What is surprising
is that, with all of the above and with a premise that could easily lend
itself to parodic or pretentious treatment, she has produced a play that
imitates nothing, never takes itself too seriously and expresses itself
(dare I say despite its monumental lyricism?) with clarity.

What else is not surprising is that The Darker Face of the Earth
has all of the usual trappings of any mortal's first play:
It takes too long to say things, leaves loose threads hanging in places
and fails to pay enough attention to the purpose of some of its characters.
I'm willing to forgive and forget these defects, especially if it will
keep Ms. Dove from retreating back into the poet's corner. I see great
raw material, and hope she will feel encouraged to use it.

The story, guided poetically by an African chorus/narrator (Saidah Ekulona),
may seem both predictable and impossibly complex. It plays out as neither.
The basic Oedipus story is retold on a South Carolina slave plantation
in the first half of the 19th Century. Greek tragedy is mixed with American
slave history, and then blended with African tribal spirits, the zodiac
and even the French Revolution. The unlikely concoction merges quite naturally,
emphasizing the playwright's notion that all cultures emanate from the
same root.

The main story (also the most clearly told) is a tragedy grounded in
miscegenation: A baby boy is born to Amalia (Felicity LaFortune), the wife
of the plantation owner, Louis (David Adkins). Louis's joy is short-lived
as he discovers that the baby is black, his father a slave named Hector
(Ramon Moses). To avoid embarassment, the baby is sold. Twenty years later,
the new owner has died and the baby, now a rebellious slave known as Augustus
Newcastle (Ezra Knight), is again sold, back, by happenstance, to Amalia.
(Amalia now runs the plantation. Both her husband and her lover have seemingly
gone mad -- Louis has become a recluse, spending all of his time on the
balcony of his room divining meaning from the planets and the stars, and
Hector lives in the swamps, in a rage.) Augustus becomes Amalia's lover.
Confronting Hector in the swamp, Augustus fights with and kills him. Later,
as Augustus begins to discover some (but not all) of the facts surrounding
his birth and sale, he murders Louis (thinking he is his father) and then,
as the truth unfolds and as fate would have it, also kills Amalia.

Other stories are woven into this familiar trajectory, each enriching
the others. The lives of slaves, their feelings, beliefs and rituals, resonate
with mythological cross-references. Augustus enters their parallel lives
which center on a conjure woman named Scylla (Trazana Beverley) and young
slaves named Phoebe (BW Gonzales) and Diana (Jacquelyn R. Hodges), as well
as others. A slave revolt, inspired by tales from Haiti and the French
revolution, and incited by Augustus and a group of revolutionaries lurking
in the shadows, provides yet another undercurrent and a rumbling backdrop
for the terrifying conclusion of the Oedipan saga.

The acting throughout is splendid, particularly on the part of the exceptionally
charismatic Knight and in the remarkable rendition of the conjure woman
by Beverley. (The latter spends the entire play bent over in the posture
of one who has spent decades picking cotton, until she rises, metaphorically,
amidst the torches and chanting of the other slaves seeking their freedom
in the final moment of the play.)

There is much singing, ranging mostly from African tribal music to American
spirituals, as well as the incredibly expressive beat of three drummers,
hovering over the proceedings at center stage, executing Olu Dara's impressive
score. Richard L. Hay's sets blend the Greek, African and South Carolina
Ante-bellum traditions cleverly. Similarly, Michael Stein's costumes seem
to flow seamlessly from African life to the plantation.

While most plays are probably better seen than read, I'm inclined to
think this one may be a good one to enjoy on the page as well. The poetry
is too good to experience only in passing. I am ordering an inexpensive
copy of it. For anyone else so inclined, I'll include a link at which it
can be ordered below.

This month, Theater of the First Amendment presents its second world premiere
of the season: Anna Thesesa Cascio's Crystal. It deals with the
traumas of an adoption, when a comfortable suburban couple's dreams start
to shatter.

This is Cascio's second play at Theater of the First Amendment. Her
first was the well-received Rushmore, in 1993. She is also known
for her work in musicals, including Cry to Heaven and The House
of Martin Guerre (the latter, having been produced at the Goodman Theatre
in Chicago, is currently running with very good notices in Toronto).

Performances run from November 5 - 23, at TheaterSpace. Information
(including directions) are available by phone at (703) 993-8888. Information
is also available at the website, linked below.